Astronomy Prints 🌌: Editor's Choice: What to make of that NASA-Roscosmos meeting?

Wednesday, August 6, 2025

Editor's Choice: What to make of that NASA-Roscosmos meeting?

08/06/2025

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By Dan Robitzski

The first face-to-face meeting between NASA and Roscosmos was either a momentous occasion or something to quietly sweep under the rug, depending on which country's space agency you ask.

Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov met with NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy at the Kennedy Space Center July 31; both officials were there for the launch of the Crew-11 mission, which was scrubbed because of weather. It was the first time the leaders of the two agencies had met in person since October 2018, when NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine met with Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

But as SpaceNews senior staff writer Jeff Foust reported, Russia hailed the meeting as a pivotal moment of diplomacy while NASA hardly mentioned the meeting at all. To get more context on the story, I asked Jeff a few questions about what this story means for global space relations.

Why does it matter that these two are getting together?

Jeff Foust: It marks the first time in nearly seven years that the heads of the two agencies have met face to face, and thus signals a potential willingness by the Trump administration to engage more with Russia in space beyond the ISS partnership.

What should we make of the different responses between the U.S. and Russia?

JF: For Russia, this is a major political win, as it had been sidelined by the U.S. and other Western nations in civil space cooperation outside of the ISS since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It's not surprising they documented and promoted it as much as they did. NASA has less to gain by promoting it, a situation exacerbated by the lack of permanent leadership at the agency.

You can read the full story here.

SIGNIFICANT DIGIT

$1.3B

The value of the order EchoStar placed with MDA Space for the first 100 satellites of a $5 billion direct-to-device (D2D) connectivity constellation, even as regulatory scrutiny of the company's spectrum licenses threatens to push it into bankruptcy.

Blue Origin's New Shepard lifts off Aug. 3 on the NS-34 mission. Credit: Blue Origin webcast

GOLDEN DATA

As the extended space industry waits to see what the architecture of the Golden Dome will entail, experts are sounding alarm bells that data integration, not any specific component, will ultimately prove to be the major challenge in developing the comprehensive, nebulous missile defense system.

Here's what Dan Knight, vice president of sensors and data integration at Arcfield, told SpaceNews senior staff writer Sandra Erwin during a webinar on Golden Dome's data and artificial intelligence challengers.

"We have the information or we have the data that we need. It's just not in the right places. And so going forward, I think it's going to be essential for us to architect what is currently in place through model based systems engineering, and then build out on that."

Stay tuned next week for our daily coverage of the Smallsat Conference in Salt Lake City. This Editor's Choice newsletter will return the following week on August 20.

Trending This Week

NASA has formally ended a lunar orbiter smallsat mission more than five months after losing contact with it, another blow to the agency's efforts at low-cost planetary missions.

Lockheed Martin plans to conduct an orbital demonstration of space-based interceptors by 2028, company executives said during a meeting with reporters Aug. 4 at Lockheed's facilities.

Blue Origin conducted its third crewed New Shepard flight in just over two months Aug. 3, sending six people to space that included the winner of the auction for a seat on the company's first crewed flight four years ago.

Three European companies that have proposed combining their space businesses — Thales, Leonardo and Airbus — say they are still in discussions after missing a July deadline for a "go/no-go" decision on the merger.

FROM SPACENEWS

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